Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: CreateGrowProfit
Listen to the Podcast on Spotify: CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories
Get In Touch With Joey Chandler
Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com, and today I’m speaking to Joey Chandler. Joey is a celebration coach, and we’re going to talk about how to get better at being you. Joey, thank you so much for being here today. Where are you calling in from?
Joey: I am calling in from Reno, Nevada, and thank you so much for having me.
Morris: For people listening in, just before we hit record, Joey and I discovered that we are in very close locations to each other, just timewise differently. So if you’ve been watching my interviews, I’m in a different location right now; I’m in the mountains. And Joey was also here in the Swiss Alps in the mountains many years ago and in a village that is very close to me. It was incredible to find that out.
Joey: Yeah, that was nice. You know, I don’t get to talk to too many people that know about Lenzerheide, so it’s fun to just, you know, talk about that. I mean, such a beautiful place, such an awesome, you know, part of the world that it’s fun to talk about.
Morris: Yeah, Joey told me that you were doing snowboarding in Lenzerheide, and Lenzerheide is a very famous ski resort here in Switzerland, so definitely one of the best places to spend an entire winter in if coming to Switzerland. Joey, you call yourself a celebration coach, and that is such a unique angle. Tell me a little bit about who you work with.
Joey: Yeah, it is different. I work with mostly business owners, honestly, a lot of contractors and people in the trades—electricians, fire alarm installations—people who have businesses. They’re oftentimes men, so I work a lot with men, and they have a business, but they also see an opportunity for growth, something they want to accomplish, but they’re having a hard time getting out of the day-to-day, you know, all the stuff they have to do on a day-to-day basis to grow, to move forward. So what I do is I help them identify what I call their core process, which is their way of doing things, and then they apply that to their business.
I became a celebration coach because the very first thing that I do, and the thing that I help all my people do, is to celebrate themselves first. If you can imagine, most people, when working with someone, you get to know them, figure out their goals, their plans, take action, and then you celebrate.
But what I found in working with clients and in my own life is that we are far better at celebrating other people than ourselves. And by having celebration at the end, we just never got to it. We would do all this stuff, and by the time we got to the celebration, we were too exhausted and just ended up starting over. So we get into this repetition of being exhausted all the time, even though we’re producing great results.
Honestly, it started with my clients because they were saying, “Hey, I just celebrate other people better than myself.” So I said, “Hey, let’s move celebration up to the top,” and we started doing that. I saw immediate results because when you celebrate yourself and build up that muscle to do that, you get energized and start moving forward.
It was also when I was doing my taxes. I had put off my taxes as long as possible, and I realized I wasn’t present at any celebration right now. I was just upset that I owed money, didn’t make enough, and was angry about many things. So I decided to try moving the celebration up to the top. I thought about all the things I had accomplished in the past year, both personally and professionally, took some deep breaths, got grounded, and then got my taxes done. My taxes still sucked—I still owed money, all the stuff was exactly the same—but because I celebrated myself and kept doing that throughout the process, I just got it done. It was amazing.
I started journaling every day about what I was celebrating, but after a few days, it started to feel fake. So I began celebrating what I could from the day before, acknowledging where I struggled, setting goals, making plans, taking action, and that gave me something to celebrate the next day. That real, celebration cycle builds confidence and helps you develop systems that work for you.
My clients now get clear on how they operate and take action, and we celebrate them. They’re finding ways to create systems and procedures and ways of doing things that work for them, rather than trying to learn new ways and get overwhelmed by a massive amount of really great information youth there. For example, if you’re running an electrical business and trying to grow, you’re not going to take the time to work through all the things you learned on a podcast or in a book; you’re going to do it your way. So I say, “Let’s get really good at doing it your way and just celebrate the heck out of it and you’ll find things that work for you.
Morris: This sounds much deeper than just a gratefulness practice. It seems like you empower your clients to operate from a position of strength, rather than focusing on what’s wrong and all the struggles they’re experiencing.
Joey: Yeah, I think it’s a way of celebrating, an awareness practice, and a system. Something just the way I’m wired. I need to have kind of this going you know these baby steps the other part that was a big component of this is that I burnt out a couple of years ago. In January 2022, I woke up one day and realized I was done. I was going through a divorce, living alone post-COVID, and just had a bunch of stuff going on. I woke up and thought, “I can’t be anything but me. I just don’t have the energy.” A few days later, I woke up and asked myself, “Who am I, and how can I be more of that?” I started exploring, and I had some idea of core values at that point, but I had too many.
I heard a story from the Navy SEALs, who put everything in sets of three because apparently, when you’re getting shot at, you can remember three things more than anything else. And I just said okay well it wasn’t like this real wise transform moment, it’s just like that sounds easier. I’m going to give it a try. So I reduced my core values down to courage, connection, and curiosity.
I started waking up each day asking how I could bring courage, connection, and curiosity to my day. I took many baby steps, and eventually, they became bigger steps. Within a few months, I had recovered from burnout without focusing on yoga, meditation, journaling, drinking water, or other typical anti-burnout practices. I wasn’t against those things, but I just don’t have the energy. I was too tired and burnt out to do them. When you’re burnt out, you don’t realize how debilitating it is until you’re really there.
So by having that system that I could wake up every day and how can I bring courage, connection, curiosity to my day and that gave me a little bit of foundation. Allowed me to take a step forward and you know I would take a couple of steps forward and more steps back and it was but after a while, I got it and then that led me so I was like wow these having three core values is really powerful so I started looking at that and you know core values are talked about all the time in business.
You know, you have a lot of people who are starting their coaching practice. I’m sure they’ve been told find your core values but most people, their core values are there’s too many of them and they’re too complicated because when you’re exhausted, when you’re burnt out, you’re in those low moments when you really need your core values if they’re any more than three words you’re simply not going to remember them like that’s just the facts you just aren’t going to remember them and you need them core values are really helpful when things suck. When you don’t have the business, when you’re really doubting yourself, when just whatever it is and you can take a deep breath and say okay this is who I am.
Fast forward a few months, I was really exploring core values went really deep into them but I started to see there was always a difference between who we are and how we operate and if you imagine our core values describe who we are, I started to use this phrase called The Core Process which describes how you operate and there’s usually like five steps that you go through and there’s some version of basically asking people you know where you are, are you’re successful, where you struggle, what are your goals, what are your plans what you know, what actions can we take and everybody has their own language on that.
And maybe they reorder those things but they usually cover those steps and I started using that and I started moving forward. Then I could talk to and I started talking to coaches and consultants and then contractors about how they do things and it just dawned on me like, “Man I don’t have the energy to learn everything new but if I get better at being me, there’s just this satisfaction you get when like wow my system, mine, you know my system works and you’re like holy cow my system worked”.
I started using this with clients, and now all my coaching is about understanding their process. Each call, we walk through their process, asking where things are working and where they aren’t. And 99% of the time, clients coach themselves, realizing where they didn’t use their process or where they’re struggling with it. We explore this together, and it deepens their sense of who they are. They have their core values and a deeper sense of who they are, and we celebrate the heck out of them so they become more of themselves which is that whole idea of becoming more of you.
Morris: That is so in-depth, Joey. There are so many things I want to unpack with you. First of all, the fact that you turned it into a system—you’re right, it feels so good to be more of ourselves. There is satisfaction in this, and also in building something that comes from ourselves.
I watched one of your TikTok videos where you said there’s too much information out there and that people don’t need more information. I thought, “Yeah, it’s true.” Very rarely do I speak to someone where the problem is that they need more information; it’s usually something else. I really think you’re onto something by identifying their core values and their process. My first question is, how difficult was it for you to identify your core values, and how long did it take?
Joey: Yeah, so a bit of backstory. I had done a bunch of work around values and purpose probably for about six or eight years before that. So I had quite a bit of experience, and I had developed a system for helping people identify their core values, which people can get from my website. It’s honestly not very complicated.
One of the things I saw is that our core values are much more a part of our lives than we realize and have been with us for a long time. If you believe that we have something at our core, like love, joy, or happiness—some kind of overriding thing—then our core values represent how we make that thing happen.
For me, I say I am love at my core, and my core values are courage, connection, and curiosity. When I bring courage, connection, and curiosity to my business, relationships, or family, there’s just more love. I feel more love, they feel more love, there’s just more love—that’s just what I do. Having those core values is how I can help make that all happen.
What was really transformative was reducing my core values from five to three. Even though five was not hard to remember and I could use them, there was a tonic shift when I went from five to three. The Navy SEALs were right—you just remember them better. And when you can remember them better, you can use them more in language, think about them, and put them to use. I think this is critical with core values: you need to put them to use, to think about them. For example, if you ask someone out on a date and it doesn’t go well, you can reflect on which of your core values was missing and what was going on that prevented you from being your best self and you can just start to explore that.
My clients experience courage because it takes courage to say, “This is who I am, and this is how I operate.” They connect with themselves, form deeper connections with their clients, family, and loved ones, and get curious about what it really takes to live true to themselves. A lot of my clients go through a process where they start letting go of things: clients who no longer serve them well, relationships that don’t make them happy, and habits or practices that no longer feel true to them. This whole process allows them to operate at their best, and it all starts with understanding their core values, keeping them simple, and recognizing that they’ve been with us for a long time—they ought to be simple and not complicated.
Morris: That’s interesting timing for this interview today, Joey, because just earlier today, I posted a video with a little experiment. I showed three pictures: the first had 10 items on the table, the second had five, and the last had one. I showed each picture for just a second or a second and a half to demonstrate how difficult it is to absorb all that information.
I wanted to illustrate that if you’re focusing on too many client avatars or ideas, then even if the opportunity presents itself, you’re not going to see it because you’re distracted by eight or nine other options. But if you focus on one thing, then even if you see it for a fraction of a second, you’ll be like, “That’s it.” I feel like the way you’re explaining core values is a similar experience.
Joey: Yeah, and it’s not to say that a person doesn’t have more values than just those three, but to really make use of them, to dive deep into them, to get the full essence out of that, I think three is just by far the best because it’s easier to remember.
Morris: And it’s based on research and experimentation done by the Navy SEALs—I mean, that says a lot too.
Joey: Yeah, there’s that too. And you can try it for yourself: try having a conversation where you list five core values versus three, and you’ll see it’s far easier to say “this, this, and this” rather than “this, this, this, this, and this.” Those extra beats take time, and given how tired, exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed we are, anything that requires more energy is probably going to get let go at some point.
Morris: You also mentioned focusing on their process. That’s something I really like because it’s good to have values and ideas and missions, but we still need to live today—we need to take action, implement things, create results. So how do you go about helping people refine their process?
Joey: The first thing to know is that it’s a repetitive process. A person’s process, the first time we do it, never lasts 100%, so it’s always something you’re refining and moving forward. But in general, the way we do it is very simple. I just ask the question, “When you first start working with somebody, what’s the first thing you do?” And then, “After that, what’s the next thing you do?” And then, “What’s the next thing?” By that time, you usually have some sort of plan. Usually, it’s like, “I connect with a person, I want to know what their goals are, we come up with a plan, we take action, and then we revise and celebrate.” Is that about what you do when you work with your people?
Morris: Yeah, pretty much on a high level, yeah.
Joey: On a high level, yeah. There are details and ways that you do it 100%, but in general, that’s how people do it. So I just ask people that, and they have their own language for that, which I really like to empower because it lands true to them as opposed to just something they learned. The one thing my little twist is, which makes me the celebration coach, is that I move celebration up to the front—that’s the one thing I insist that we do. We use all the language, but we put celebration on top.
I have a coach who helps men post-divorce, and his thing is helping them create stories that they’re really proud of. We always celebrate first; we ask, “What’s the story you’re telling yourself? What’s the story you want to tell yourself?” That’s his process. Then, “What are the goals? What are the plans? What are some actions you can take?” I just use that with him, and he’s moving forward, growing his business, being a better dad—there are all sorts of things because he’s being himself.
Once we identify that, the real change happens. What really makes it amazing is that we put in a journal practice. It’s not so much journaling; it’s almost like a day-planning practice, but it’s part journal, part day-planning. You go through your process because if you can imagine your core process is essentially you operating at your best.
If I asked you how you do all these things, and you gave me a description, you’d be describing yourself at your best—when you’re the best prepared when you have it all together. This is how I help people because I know it works. So when you journal your process in the morning, you’re setting yourself up to operate at your best.
Life happens, and there are all sorts of different things, but what I find is that for me, when I go through it, I journal what I can celebrate about the day before, I ask, “Where did I struggle? What are my goals? What are my plans? What are my actions?” Doing that gets me grounded because I wake up like, “Life sucks,” or whatever bad stuff. It gets me grounded and helps me understand the power of my process, making it more part of my day-to-day life. It gives me actions I can take, which, when I take those actions, gives me something to celebrate the next day.
Morris: Yeah, that’s something I look for in all coaching methodologies and strategies: Does it work on the bad days, and does it acknowledge that sometimes life sucks? Because as awesome as it sounds to be super focused and positive, that’s just not reality.
Like and yeah how well does it work on the bad days, and I like that you have that built into the system like acknowledging it so it doesn’t become something that we suppress or avoid or even fear. It’s something that we’re ready to deal with right?
Joey: Yeah, and the great part is that on days when things suck—because they do—some aspect of your process is missing or could be elevated. Something is going on that makes that day suck. If you imagine you were operating at your best, your day wouldn’t suck. By going through your process, you can start to see, “Oh, I was missing part of my plan,” or “I didn’t ask for what I really wanted,” or “I didn’t take the action that I saw to take.” You can see where it is. Not only does your process make for a good day-planning activity, but it also makes for a very good review and revision activity, helping you explore what worked and what didn’t. And it’s really helpful that way.
Morris: Yeah, just collecting feedback on your own process. Joey, when you started coaching, how did you get your first batch of clients? What did you do to market yourself as a coach?
Joey: It was a lot of, I’ll be honest, just talking to friends. But the thing that’s working now the most is that people get the sense that I am using my process on myself—I am doing my work. There are so many people out there saying, “Hey, there’s this amazing thing we can do,” and then you ask them, “Are you using your process?” and they say, “Well, no, it doesn’t apply to me, or it doesn’t apply to my situation, or I borrowed this from someone else’s thing“. There’s so much skepticism that like.
If you can’t own your process, if you can’t say “Hey this is how I do things and these are the results I produce and I may not have done it for a lot of other people but let me tell you about how I use my process. You know, in my dating, in my fitness and my whatever, I can, you know, I can do it”. The more stories you have the better off it is.
So the way I did it is you start to do as many free or low-cost things as you can and you build up your system, you build up your process, you build up your ability to produce results so you can look someone in the eye and say, “If you sign up with me and you pay your whatever it is, the whatever the amount is, well, I start to guarantee results now. Look I don’t know when it will happen but if you use your process over and over again you will produce the result you want. It may not happen as fast as you want but it’s probably going to happen faster than you think.”
So we just go to work on that but I think the big thing too is you got to apply your process to yourself. If you aren’t clear like your process is like the sh*t, I’m sorry if I’m using the language like if you aren’t clear your process is like really really good either, do the work to make it great or not because there are too many coaches who have really good things and if you can’t say here’s how I produce results for you know for you this type of person, it’s really going to be really hard.
It’s just going to be exhausting because you’re going be trying to prove yourself to somebody and more importantly you’re be trying to prove yourself to yourself and that is no fun. I’ve done that for years and that is no fun.
Morris: Yeah the fake it till you make it approach is very draining.
Joey: It’s very draining but here’s the cool part this is why everybody should come and figure out their core process and celebrate, because your core process, the way you do things, is already in your life. We don’t create anything new with your core process. All we do is bring some clarity, refinement, and intentionality to it. So when you get clear on your core process, you can very quickly go back and say, “You know what? I didn’t know this exactly, but here’s what I did in this situation,” and it lines up exactly with my core process and produced X result.
Morris: Yeah, like taking the flashlight and illuminating things that we’re already doing successfully, and then even being able to communicate that to others.
Joey: Yeah, and it gives you a boost yourself. You’re like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t know it then, but I can look back in my life and have many stories where I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I celebrated people, I looked at our struggles, and I did it over and over again.” I can use those stories to build confidence for myself, even if I wasn’t using that process exactly.
Morris: So if you went back in time, right? Like giving yourself tips on how to get started with your marketing, is that the number one thing you would tell yourself—refine the process on yourself and share your results on you, apply the process to yourself?
Joey: I think that’s one. Just be comfortable with your process. And the other thing I think is, there’s a model that’s been on my mind: you got to find people that are weird like you. I talk about core values and core processes and all this to the point where my family is like, “Stop talking about it.” And I’ve been talking about core values and the idea that we have something at our core for 10 years. Trying to convince people to see the world the way you do is exhausting and impossible. I mean, maybe not impossible, but really, really hard.
So figure out your way, and think about what makes you weird. As for me, I have an electrical contractor who this week is on a five-day meditation retreat with his wife and is going to end up dancing under the full moon with 150 other women. I attract weird people, and there’s no other electrical contractor I know that does that, but I attract the people who are weird and don’t feel like they fit into their industry because that’s how I felt for so long. So one of the things is, get clear on who you are, celebrate your weirdness, and find people who are weird like you. It just makes life so much easier.
Morris: I love that. What a great closing story, Joey. Like, be more of you and share the stories of you, no matter how weird, because others are going to be attracted to that.
Joey: Yeah, the weird stuff is the thing that makes you interesting. If you’re like, “Hi, I’m a productivity coach,” or “I’m a confidence coach,” or “I’m a whatever coach,” there are literally a thousand million other coaches doing the exact same thing.
But if you’re like, “Look, I help business owners who feel like they’re the weirdos, the wackos, and the people who don’t fit in,” those are my people. I help them figure out who they are and then turn that weirdness into a superpower, because it’s what makes them different, interesting, and ultimately allows them to relax, be themselves, and move forward. If you can be yourself and celebrate what makes you weird with somebody else, you’re just going to be more successful, move forward, have more fun, and all that stuff.
Morris: Even you sharing that just now makes me feel more connected to you, like right as a … Yeah, it’s true. It really works.
Joey: Well, I got to ask you, what’s something that makes you weird? What can we share here that’s like, you’re like, “I feel weird here,” that maybe somebody could connect with you on?
Morris: Okay, what would be my weird thing? I guess it’s, I really like fantasy stories, you know, like elves and dwarfs and all that stuff. I love that. I love stories like that, whether it’s from TV shows or books—like right now, I’m listening to the Mistborn audiobook series. Yeah, that stuff just gets me excited.
Joey: Just imagine, you could create a whole coaching system around fantasy books and… I actually met a branding expert, and she said, “You know, the problem with people these days is that they don’t have enough imagination. Instead of reading a self-help book, you should go read a book about a dragon, because when you read a book about a dragon, you create a whole new world for yourself. You make things happen, and you see ways of doing things that maybe you hadn’t seen before, instead of like the traditional, ‘Let’s solve the problem.'”
That would be beautiful. You could just own the heck out of it, because there are so many people who love fantasy books, and you could connect with them. That could be a whole client base right there.
Morris: And you’re right. One of the reasons why I enjoy these stories so much is because there are exaggerated situations that never happen in real life. But because they’re exaggerated, they’re like analogies for things that happen in our lives, right? You start to find your own little nuggets of wisdom in those books. It’s all interpretation, of course, but that’s something I appreciate about those stories.
So, Joey, you mentioned earlier that you have a free guide on your website where people can get started identifying their core values. Where can they find that?
Joey: Yeah, it’s at joeychandler.net. It’ll be on the webpage there. I flip through different things—sometimes I have my core values, sometimes I have information about a core process, and sometimes I give the questions for celebration. I always have something there, and it kind of rotates.
Morris: And if people want to get in touch with you after listening to you, where do they go?
Joey: joeychandler.net is the main place, and I’m @joeychandler70 across all social media. But joeychandler.net is the main part—I have blog posts and whatnot. The main thing is, if somebody has an idea, a vision, like “Man, I have this thing that I want to get out in the world, but I feel too weird to do it,” or anything like that, please get in touch with me. We can go through… I always do the first coaching session for free, and at the end, you’ll be more clear on who you are, and what you’re about, and you’ll have the confidence to share that weird thing and make it happen, because the world needs your message, whatever that is.
Morris: I love that, Joey. Such a good ending. Thank you very much for this interview. Thank you for your time.
Joey: Thank you.
.And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit
If you are a coach or consultant, and your goal is to get your very first client online, then I have a simple strategy for you that’s very beginner friendly, you can download this strategy for FREE from my website at CreateGrowProfit.
Thank you and see you on my next blog!